TWO CENTURIES OF SCOTTISH CURIOSITIES.* WE have no hesitation in

saying that, edited carefully and with an eye to historical proportion, this might have been one of the most important additions that have been made for many years to the history and literature of Scotland. But, edited amateurishly, it is not so much a book as a lumber- room. No doubt Mrs. Atholl Forbes, who has done such editing as the work can boast of, means well, but she ought to have consulted some expert as to the best use to make of the valuable materials which have fallen into her hands. She ought also to have taken the advice of some one familiar with Scotch political and ecclesiastical history before she made a series of wonderful statements (p. 18) about Richard Cameron, the founder of the sect of Cameronians :-

"Richard Cameron, as is well known, was a notable preacher and leader of a large body of Covenanters who clung rigidly to the tenets of John Knox, and looked upon the Stuart family as nearly allied to his Satanic Majesty. . . . . . Knowledge as to his whereabouts could only be obtained through a few low-born thieving spies who lived on the proceeds of such information, and it was by the aid of one of these that he was eventually captured, taken to Edinburgh Castle, and condemned to death. From this he escaped when actually on the scaffold, by means of a pardon obtained by a clever ruse on the part of his daughter, with whom and another he escaped to the Netherlands."

To any one who knows anything of the actual facts of the case, and of the true meaning of the anti-Erastianism which Richard Cameron embodied in his famous Sanquhar Declara- tion, and for which he died at Ayrsmoss, nothing could well seem more grotesque than the statement that he " clung rigidly to the tenets of John Knox, and looked upon the Stuart family as nearly allied to his Satanic Majesty." The mar- vellous story, too, of Cameron's escape from execution in Edinburgh is quite mythical. All that Professor Herkless of St. Andrews, who is Cameron's latest biographer, has to say of the departure of his hero for the Netherlands is that it probably took place in 1679. Besides, Cameron, who at his death was quite a young man, was never married and never had a daughter. And there are far too many things in Mrs. Forbes's book almost as unfortunate as the allusion to Cameron.

But even a volume which is far more of a lumber-room than of a book may have good things in it. This is emphatically

true of Curiosities of a Scots Charta Chest, which covers two hundred years of Scottish history—between 1600 and 1800—

which throws light upon the characters of such men as James Boswell and the two Allan Ramsays, the poet and the painter, and among the unconsidered trifles in which is such an entry as :—" August 31. The celebrated David Hume, the historian, died this week and buried very privately. He was my forty-five years' old acquaintance. He bought a burial-place in Calton Hill Churchyard at £5 sterling, and lye there.

A monument is to be inscribed to him. He left about £12,000 to his brothers and sisters mostly got by his writings." The very remarkable letters and other documents which are scattered over these pages, and might have been made so much of, are all connected with the old Scotch family of Dick —or of Dick-Cunyngham—of Prestonfield, near Edinburgh.

Accordingly to a memorandum by Sir Alexander Dick, which reads like an extract from one of Stevenson's novels, the comparative greatness of the family was founded when James VI. of Scotland went to Denmark to marry the Princess Anne :—

"For this purpose he selected Captain John Dick to command the Royal vessel, and so prosperous a voyage did they have both going and returning, and so much was His Majesty pleased with Capt. Dick's conduct in bringing him and his Bride safely to Leith that he asked the Capt. if he was married, and on receiving the reply, Not yet, an' please your Majestie,' says the King, ' I will give you a good wife of my own choosing and my own name, and the ladie is the sister of Sir Lewis Stewart of Kirkhill, my Lord Advocate of Scotland, to whom you shall be properly introduced.' "

Thus prettily and swiftly was the fortune of a Scotch family made in the old days. Almost as swiftly and not nearly so prettily was it lost. Captain John Dick did as his King bade him, and married the wife allotted to him. The result of the union was a son, William, who, taking to a mercantile life, succeeded greatly, and in time became Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and a Baronet of Nova

• Curiosities of a Scots Charts Chest. 1600.1800. With the Travel, and Memoranda of Sir Alexander Dick, Baronet, of Preetonfield. Midlothian, written by Himself. Edited and arranged by the Hon. Bre. Atholl Forbes. Edinburgh Witham Brown,

Scotia. Unfortunately for himself, he took an active part on the side of the Scottish Parliament in the struggle with Charles I., and advanced in all during the period which ended in the battle of Marston Moor the sum of £65,000— which represents a great deal more money than in our own day—for the maintenance of the Scotch armies. But, as the story is told by his descendant, Sir Alexander Dick, in one of those memoranda which have furnished so much of the mate- rial for this volume, " The rebellion against King Charles took a new form under that arch-rebel Oliver Cromwell, who not only destroyed the King but the Constitution." Poor Sir William was unable to secure repayment of his loan to the Treasury, or even interest upon it, and, as a consequence, failed in business. He went to London, and although his case was supported by most public men in Scotland, including the Earl of London, then Chancellor for Scotland, he failed to convince the Treasury, which seems to have been notable for flinty obdurateness then, as it is now. On the contrary, he was declared bankrupt and thrown into Westminster Gaol, where he died. The sad story of this Sir William Dick is reproduced here in piteous letters addressed to the House of Commons by the General Assembly of the Church of

Scotland, and in equally piteous and very quaint engravings. "After the disastrous death of Sir William," as Mrs.

Forbes puts it in her curious way, " his sons scattered, and for a time the Baronetcy of Dick of Braid lay dormant, and it was not known which of the family were alive. Eventually, in the next century it fell to Mr. James Boswell, younger of Auchinleck, while on his travels in Italy, to discover the representative of Sir William's eldest surviving son, who was acting Consul at Leghorne." But Mrs. Forbes also tells us that-

" We find Sir William Dick's grandson, Sir James Dick, called to London in 1680 by King Charles IL to attend his brother, the Duke of York, to Edinburgh. Sir James was at that time Lord Provost of Edinburgh, to which office was attached that of a Privy Councilor, a dignity which had to be supported with great mag- nificence and expense, and we learn that the Lord Provost's coach being one of only five or six in the whole city, the Peers and Members of Parliament marched on horseback in great form.' "

This section of the Dick family, at all events, seems to have been able to hold its head above water, although it had to take its share of misfortune in troublous time. Thus the house of Prestonfield was burned down by a mob. Sir James, accompanying the Duke of York to Edinburgh in his capacity of Lord Provost, was very nearly drowned in the Gloster ' man-of-war, which went down with three hundred and thirty men on board, of whom only one hundred and thirty were saved. During his life, the leading Judge in Scotland, Sir George Lockhart, President of the Court of Session, was shot by a half-insane litigant. Sir James tells the ghastly story in a letter with a realism which again recalls Stevenson, and, indeed, suggests that that supreme artist must, while forming his style and collecting his material, have had access to Scotch family documents of the sort that are to be found in this book :—

" This murder was designedly done by one Cheisley of Dairy, who has an estate lying within a mile of this place of near 500 Pounds sterling a year. The said Murderer was apprehended, the Pistol in his hand being a short pocket pistol. He came stealing behind the President's back, and then shot him. The Ball went through his Body, and came out at his right Pap, and grased upon the wall, when he instantly died. I was called to he one of his Assisers, and upon Proof led before us, we have con- demned him. To-morrow at 2 o'c. he is to be executed at the Cross in this manner, viz., his right hand is to be cut off alive, after that he is to be hanged with the Pistol about his neck, and then his body to be hung on chains between Leith and this Place, and his right hand to be placed at the West Port of this town which is the Port that leads to his estate."

Sir James had for twenty years the secretarial services of the man who, after George Heriot, was the leading bene- factor of Edinburgh. This was George Watson, founder of Watson's Hospital, which now plays a most important part in the education of Scotland. It was while he was secretary to Sir James Dick, indeed, that George Watson amassed his fortune, "chiefly from his being allowed to negotiate foreign bills, and that to a certain extent with Sir James's money."

George Watson would have deserved immortality even if he had not been a public benefactor. For, according to a memorandum of Sir Alexander Dick, he embodied the creed

of Scotch thrift in a rhyme worthy of it :- " He that bath a watch, this must do,

To pocket his watch, and watch his pocket too." . After their early troubles, the members of the Dick, or Dick- Canyngham, family played an essentially uneventful part in the life of Scotland. Mrs. Atholl Forbes gives a long and loosely connected story of travels, and elopements, and marriages, and deaths, which is terminated in 1804, and which is told in letters that are often long, sometimes lively, and invariably ill-spelt. Allan Ramsay the poet was an intimate friend of the family, and we have here specimens (with more than one facsimile) of his poetry and his prose,—the latter in the form of letters. They confirm the opinion that the author of "The Gentle Shepherd" was light-hearted and good- natured but essentially superficial, both as a man and as an artist. Here is his " philosophy " in a letter written from Edinburgh to Sir Alexander Dick, who was then travelling on the Continent in company with Allan the younger, who had been trained as a painter :—

" The chiels that seem most easy are these same Demoecritans [sic] you notice, who ken that ther is no such thing as perfect Satisfaction, and e'en quietly make the best of an ill bargain, and laugh at the lave [the others] that take the pet at their potage because they canna get aquavilm to them. I wad fain shoulder myself amang this class, and follow your example and let the wretched make themselves still more wretched by disregarding of what they can really possess by running themselves out of breath after what they may never reach."

Benjamin Franklin is among the notables who visited Prestonfield during the days of Sir Alexander Dick. He recorded his gratitude for the hospitality he received in verses, of which the following is a specimen :-

"Easy converse, sprightly wit,

These we found in dame and knight, Cheerful meals and balmy rest, Beds that never bugs molest."

Another friend of Sir Alexander Dick was James Boswell, who, as has already been noticed, discovered in John Dick, Consul at Leghorn or Pisa, the direct heir male of that Sir William Dick, of Braid, who lent all his money to the Government of his day, and died a bankrupt in Westminster Gaol. Boswell busied himself in his usual way, and with his usual success, in proving John Dick's rights. It is un- necessary to say that " Bozzy " interested his friends in Piozzi and Johnson, and Samuel was good enough to say, "Sir Alexander Dick is the only Scotsman liberal enough not to be angry that I could not find trees where trees were not." This book, ill compacted though it is, will be very valuable to some future historian for the information it contains--chiefly in the familiar letters to which allusion has already been made —as to manners, customs, industries, and even prices of food, during two interesting and imperfectly known centuries.